Antonino, Saint

(Antonio Pierozzi, 1389-1459)

   Son of a Florentine notary, he was attracted to join the Dominican order in 1405 by the preaching of the anti-humanist friar Giovanni Dominici; and he remained suspicious of humanistic culture even though he became close to one of the humanists' great patrons, Cosimo de'Medici. He gained a reputation for piety, learning, and administrative ability and became prior of San Marco in 1436. In 1446 Pope Eugenius IV appointed him archbishop of Florence. Unlike many bishops of his time, he was no absentee but became an energetic pastor to the citizens, struggling to reform the morals and deepen the piety of a rich and worldly society.

   As archbishop of one of the world's most active centers of capitalism, Antonino had to deal with the discord between the ordinary practices of the business world (such as charging interest on loans) and the laws of the medieval church, which regarded business activities, like all aspects of life, as subject to its moral and legal control. His numerous writings, such as his Summa moralia/A Compendium of Morality, are scholastic and traditional in manner and content. Antonino approved certain types of credit transactions but denounced many of the subterfuges by which businessmen tried to conceal their morally and legally questionable practice of charging interest. He was widely revered in his own lifetime as a holy and principled pastor and was canonized in 1523.